‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ These words are recognisable to many people who are unaware of the poem in which they originate. Published in The Examiner on 11 January 1818, ‘Ozymandias’ is perhaps Percy Bysshe Shelley’s most celebrated and best-known poem. And we find the famous line […]
‘Ode to Death’ is a poem by Charlotte Smith (1749-1806), a fascinating poet who is regarded as one of the first English Romantic poets (before Wordsworth and Coleridge had officially ushered in the movement in Britain). Published in 1797, ‘Ode to Death’ takes the perhaps unlikely position of celebrating death […]
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ is perhaps the most famous statement John Keats ever wrote. But what do these words mean? They form part of the concluding couplet to his poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, perhaps the most famous of his five Odes which he composed in 1819, which […]